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The "Communist organization," which calls itself the National Unemployed Workers' Movement, has had headquarters for some years in London's dreary Bloomsbury district. It put on the now forgotten Hunger March of 1930. Its leader is secretive Mr. W. A. L. ("Wal") Hannington, a young man supposed to have instigated the mutiny last year in the Royal Navy (TIME, Sept. 28, 1931). Tousle-haired and tireless, "Wal" Hannington looked last week like an overwrought college student as he dashed about London in an open motor car, marshaling the hungry who called him their "Field Marshal" When newshawks caught up with Red Wal, he gave them this to think about: "We do not advocate violence, but if a society responsible for our present evils cannot be removed otherwise, we are ready to use violent revolutionary measures. If the police use batons on us you can't expect the marchers to turn the other cheek. We are organized like an army and we will act like one."
Inevitably London's bobbies had to use their batons. What else could they do when men and women started throwing stones at limousines parked outside the socialite Regal Cinema near Marble Arch? When brickbats began to fill the air? As the truncheons went to work, rioters broke branches from Hyde Park trees, used them as clubs. Chief Inspector Oger of Scotland Yard was carried to St. George's Hospital with a fractured skull. About 40 other people, bobbies and mobsters, received hospital treatment. Police reserves collared shabby men & women, packed them into vans which streaked for London's jails. Next morning the surprising discovery was made by London magistrates that almost everyone arrested was a resident of London, not a "hunger marcher" at all.
Genuine hunger marchers explained that Field Marshal Hannington was saving them for a march on the House of Commons this week, when he would try to present a petition signed by more than 1,000,000 unemployed. Over the weekend, however, Trafalgar Square was blocked by a nasty mob of 15,000, again mostly Londoners. Shouts of "Down with the National Government!'' alternated with the cries of babies brought by their mothers and vague shouts of "Down with the Rich!" "Down with the Baby Starvers!"
"Give us a quid! Give us a quid!" cried a man who may or may not have been in his senses. After a long while someone gave him a pound note. Someone else gave him ten shillings. Disgusted, the man changed his tune to "Coppers! Coppers—or anything you've got!" In five minutes his hat was lined with small change, in another five he had disappeared. A taxicab backfired. Everyone thought the sound was a shot and several riots were on.
Surging toward the Admiralty Arch, behind which lies the Mall and Buckingham Palace, one section of the mob blundered so hard into a cordon of mounted police that one was knocked from his horse. Screamed a swart, hatless man: ''Smash the Palace windows!"